The move away from print to online advertising continues to take its toll at Johnston Press. The second biggest publisher of regional newspapers in the UK, with journals such as the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post in its stable, saw profits in the six months to June fall to Â£79.8 million from Â£82.2 million in the same period last year.

Revenue was up 18 percent, but only because of the acquisition of the Scotsman. Like for like sales were down 7.5 percent.

It’s hard to believe it was over two years ago now. You may recall, the start of 2004 saw the revelation that Shell had overstated its oil reserves. Bad announcement followed bad announcement, resignations followed, and ultimately the crisis claimed the head of chairman, Sir Philip Watts. Before the dust...Read More

We have been staring into our crystal ball, or to be more precise, PricewaterhouseCoopers have been getting their slide rules out to predict what the global economy will be like in 2050. The conclusions: over the next 45 years India will be the fastest growing economy, and by one measure...Read More

The conclusion of a new report, is so staggering that it
needs time for the true ramifications to sink in. According to debt advisors and solution
providers, Thomas Charles, there are 1.7 million adults in the UK with debt problems,
and no less than one million of them are “quite...Read More

How can you reconcile these two pieces of information? The number of individual insolvencies has soared, more than doubling over the last two years, and yet average disposable wealth is rising rapidly too, (although admittedly not quite as fast as debt) seeing a 7% jump in the...Read More

When, in 1988, the Government made it compulsory to study Science to GCSE level, it was assumed this would lead to an increase in the number of Britain’s scientists. And yet, 18 years on, the shortage of scientists in the UK is creating a crisis that could...Read More

So the rate of interest is up, and will probably continue to rise. Now news in from KPMG has found that just as conditions are about to get tougher, they are already pretty bad anyway.
In a new report, KPMG, with figures compiled by Mandis Information Services Ltd,...Read More

Wireless is such an old fashioned word. It brings back memories of a British family huddled around a device in the living room, listening to BBC Light, before the TV became the mass medium it is today.

Quite ironic then, that wireless today is associated with the future, wireless broadband,...Read More

It was like a mass sell off for a while yesterday, with the FTSE rapidly falling by 100 points. But if there is a terror premium built into shares, and a terrorism plot has been thwarted, you would, if anything, expect shares to move the other way, and eventually,...Read More

And so the butterfly flapped its wings and set off a chain of events that would affect the weather on the other side of the globe. The butterfly effect is the idea that in a system a small localised change results in an unpredictable and disproportionate disturbance across the entire...Read More

They criticize Gordon Brown for making things complicated. Means testing is held out as an example of a measure that costs too much to administer – or so some say, and the flat taxation brigade site these costs of administration as one of the big benefits of imposing a one...Read More

Last week we told how the Association of British Insurers thinks we need more competition amongst our auditors. The big four, that’s Deloitte Touche, Ernst Young, KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit the accounts of 97 percent of all FTSE 350 companies, and the ABI said :“There...Read More

Maybe it’s the calm before the storm – literally. The price of oil has fallen over the weekend. It’s now $4 a barrel down on the prices seen in the middle of last week, but economists fear a new surge with black gold breaching the $80 level and hitting new...Read More

Above we told how the 16 to 24s are listening to less radio – perhaps the iPod generation are listening to their downloaded music files instead. Now the BEEB is working on an idea for turning MP3 players into digital radios. Apparently it’s in talks with a major player...Read More

From up high the hawk looks down upon the poor unsuspecting doves, preparing to swoop down, and ruffle a lot more than just feathers. Yesterday, the Bank of England governor Mervyn King sounded like an arch hawk, as he said we are “ready to take whatever action” is necessary to...Read More